Black and White Headshots in the Studio | Özgür

Check out this weird coincidence. Just a few days after my shoot with Paul Carter in a Breather room, I was contacted by Özgür Taylan Gültekin, from the NoirBlanc design office, who created Breather concepts on his design website. He's a product designer based in Montreal who specializes in digital media, graphic design, art direction, brand identity design. If you can’t really picture what he does from this description, check out his website.
At this point, you might be wondering: Özgür Taylan Gültekin, where could that name come from? If you’ve guessed Panama you’re way off. If you’ve guessed a Nordic country, you’re a bit closer but still not there. If you’ve guessed Chicken, you’re quite close actually, but he’s from Turkey. And Özgür taught me how to spot Turks in Montreal. If anyone says “drink a cigarette” instead of “smoke a cigarette”, odds are that they are Turkish. (Wait wait hold up. This just in. In Hindi and Urdu you also say “drink a cigarette”!)

OK so I love peeking at people’s websites when planning a shoot and deciding on the lighting. It gives you pretty good insight in what the subjects may want in the look and mood of the photographs. He asked me for a few black and white headshots in the studio. I kept the headshots simple, just like his clean and miminal website.

Özgür came extremely well prepared. He brought a steamer for his shirts. (I need a steamer now. Those things are awesome.) He brought clothespins to make sure his shirts weren’t loose in the back. He brought his amazing beard and had anti-glare glasses, which make my life so much easier since I don’t have to work around reflections. AND. Perhaps most important of all, he brought the bluest of all Blue Steels™ that would even make Derek Zoolander jealous.